Boerne’s new SoBo scores a coup with custom hotel, conference center

This rendering depicts the front of the new The Bevy Hotel Boerne, a Hilton DoubleTree property, which will feature much-needed meeting space for conventions when it opens next year.

This rendering depicts the front of the new The Bevy Hotel Boerne, a Hilton DoubleTree property, which will feature much-needed meeting space for conventions when it opens next year.

Photo: Courtesy /Hilton

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This rendering shows the Bevy hotel that will be built in Boerne. Affiliated with the Hilton DoubleTree hotel group, the boutique hotel will have 120 rooms and a 7,200-square-foot conference center that local officials have long sought in the area to attract conventions and other meetings. less

This rendering shows the Bevy hotel that will be built in Boerne. Affiliated with the Hilton DoubleTree hotel group, the boutique hotel will have 120 rooms and a 7,200-square-foot conference center that local ... more

Photo: Courtesy /Hilton

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This rendering shows what one of the inside meeting spaces could look like at the new The Bevy Hotel Boerne, a Hilton DoubleTree that is expected to be open by 2019.

This rendering shows what one of the inside meeting spaces could look like at the new The Bevy Hotel Boerne, a Hilton DoubleTree that is expected to be open by 2019.

Photo: Courtesy /

Boerne’s new SoBo scores a coup with custom hotel, conference center

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BOERNE — Forget about SoHo in Manhattan; this Hill Country town has SoBo, the booming commercial district that flanks U.S. 87 south of town.

The roughly 500-acre area is attracting promising new development, including a 120-room “artisan boutique” hotel that features a long-sought conference center.

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“After all these many years and after all this discussion … it will be here,” Mayor Mike Schultz told attendees at a groundbreaking last week at the site.

The $25 million “Bevy” hotel is forecast to boost the broader economy by drawing conventioneers and other guests Monday through Thursday, when hotel bookings and retail activity are typically slow.

The hotel is among several new projects in SoBo, as the city has branded the zone bordered by Interstate 10 to the west and Texas 46 to the north and extending beyond U.S. 87 to the east.

The city hired consultants in 2016 to assist in creating a common vision for SoBo, inviting property owners and developers to discuss working cooperatively, municipal records say.

Before settling on SoBo, officials considered South Town as a moniker for the area that became more attractive to developers with the recent construction of a westbound frontage road on I-10, with local access, between U.S. 87 and Texas 46.

The extension of Herff Road from Old San Antonio Road west across U.S. 87 to the hotel site also created new frontage sites for commercial development.

Misty Mayo, president of the Boerne Kendall County Economic Development Corp., said agency recruitment efforts focus on high-tech, light manufacturing, health care and office projects that correlate with primary job creation.

Already, there are new medical offices and brand-name retail outlets, and more is on the way.

But the hotel is seen as a coup that has city leaders cheering.

Its lead developer, Phoenix Hospitality Group, began planning for it in 2010 — initially eyeing a downtown site — to include sorely needed local meeting space large enough to lure conventions and other gatherings, said Ed McClure, company founder and CEO.

“That just didn’t materialize,” said McClure, who subsequently opened hotels in Live Oak and at Brooks City Base before reviving the Boerne project in 2015 with Ross Partlow and Tim Lange on a 4-acre parcel they owned beside I-10.

The trio joined forces with Hilton on “The Bevy,” a DoubleTree Hotel designed by Cooper Carry architects.

It’s slated to open next year with a 7,200-square-foot conference center, a full-service restaurant, a bar, outdoor event spaces and wraparound porches, all with Hill Country styling, not to mention a swimming pool.

Cast as a public-private endeavor, the city approved $4.75 million in incentives for the developers, and Kendall County commissioners followed suit by agreeing to rebate 75 percent of new county taxes paid on the site for a decade.

County Judge Darrel Lux noted that the hotel partners reside locally and said, “This venture isn’t about a group coming into our community and trying to change the Hill Country.

“They are our neighbors,” he said. “They have an interest in keeping the flavor of Kendall County unique.”

County resident Sue Morris said she’s excited about the new hotel, noting, “It will bring conventions and other visitors to Boerne.”

She commented outside the former Boerne Civic Center, one of the town’s larger meeting venues before it was repurposed last year into a YMCA. It had run a deficit of at least $220,000 for three straight years as a municipal events venue, officials say.

Morris preferred the Y’s old storefront location in SoBo, she said, over the new Adler Road site that’s being leased for a nominal amount from the city.

The YMCA project was hailed as “a great urban renewal thing … that’s working out very well,” by City Manager Ron Bowman. “The civic center was old, it lacked amenities, it was too small,” he noted.

Kerrie Williams, another Y patron, said she favors its new location, which is closer to home. But she said she’s “not crazy” about the new hotel.

“The city is overdeveloping, but they don’t care because all they care about is the (tax) money,” she said.

Tax incentives are often key to bringing in large-scale new development, but city leaders say they don’t have a take-all-comers approach.

“We have specific targets for recruitment that marry what the community is seeking, whether it’s retail convenience or medical services, with what the data is telling us about our community needs,” the economic development corporation’s Mayo said.

City tax incentives of up to $100,000, for example, were approved for a three-story office building, to include an ambulatory surgery center, that’s now being constructed near the hotel site by Palomar Boerne, a partnership led by Dr. Ramiro “Sonny” Cavazos.

“I work with doctors who wanted to practice in Boerne and to be part of a project like one we’d done before in San Antonio,” Cavazos said last year.

The project will fill a local void in services, Mayo said, noting, “If you’re going to have a day surgery now, you’re going to have to leave Boerne for that.”

In other development, a ribbon-cutting was held last week on a new SoBo clinic opened by Northeast OB/GYN Associates beside the hotel site. It replaced a rented office.

Mayo also helped convince James Avery Jewelry to build a retail outlet nearby on Bandera Road. It opened in November. “They are a strong, well-respected brand,” she said.

Bowman, the city manager, said he’d like to attract a large sporting goods store to help stop the “bleed” of sales tax revenues when locals shop at the Rim or other areas of San Antonio.

It’s the hope of Bowman and other city officials that the ad valorem and sales tax revenues generated in the growing commercial zone will relieve pressure on residential taxpayers, who now account for just over 70 percent of the city’s tax base. Sightly less than 30 percent is commercial.

But calls for slower development are a familiar refrain in this fast-growing city among those who see its small-town character and quality of life under threat.

“You’ll find a certain segment of people here who are opposed to any growth, especially commercial,” said Bob Vollmer, a resident since 1980. “Personally, I think growth is natural and normal, but I fault the city for not controlling growth more aggressively.”

Bowman believes that the city is planning properly.

“We’re never going to be like a Frisco, Texas, that explodes,” he said, referring to the suburban community north of Dallas. “We’re going to grow gradually here.”